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Make America Great Again—to the Exclusion of Muslims and Immigrants

By
Sin Yen Ling
May 2017

May 6, 2017, marked the 135th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act (repealed in 1943), the first set of laws restricting immigration to the United States on the basis of race and nationality. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Act and established that the president and Congress have plenary power over who may or may not enter the United States. This precedent paved the way for the federal government to create, in 2002, the highly controversial National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. This specialregistrationprogram required men (and boys over 16) from 25 predominantly Muslim countries and North Korea to report to local immigration offices for fingerprinting and questioning based on religion, gender, and national origin.

Donald J. Trump’s election as president reminds those of us who identify as immigrants or people of color that America was built on slavery, racism, and white supremacy. No matter how many steps are made toward progress and inclusion, those who are not white are considered the “other” or “foreign.” Today exclusionary policies apply not only to Muslims (see, e.g., President Trump’s executive order on immigration, commonly known as the “Muslim ban” or the “travel ban”) but also to Latinos as the president makes good on his threat to build a border wall and deport “bad hombres.” The rhetoric of the Trump campaign and presidency demonizes an entire community. Muslims being characterized as terrorists after 9/11 is analogous to Mexicans being described as “rapists” and “drug dealers”—except that the term “Mexicans” is a stand-in for all noncitizens or immigrants. Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was easily read as making America white or culturally pure again.

Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, a few of us reminisced over the 9/11 days, and we agreed that the public then paid little attention to how President George W. Bush’s policies affected Muslims. We contrasted that with the outrage and resistance seen since Trump’s inauguration. The 2017 Women’s March alone, in response to Trump’s misogynistic messages, was likely the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. In New York City the Women’s March drew almost half a million protesters, packed like sardines over more than 15 blocks. I marched with Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund staff and alumni holding signs that reflected our many identities: “Show Up For Refugees,” “Nasty Woman,” “Don’t Mourn, Organize.”

On January 27, 2017, President Trump issued the last of three immigration-related executive orders, the so-called Muslim or travel ban, which proposed to ban entry for 90 days for immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somali, Yemen, and Sudan as well as indefinitely ban Syrian refugees. The next day massive protests erupted at airports around the country as Muslims were barred from entering the United States. I headed to JFK International Airport in the late afternoon to join the protests. Earlier in the day, ACLU had filed a class action lawsuit, and one of the ACLU attorneys called me inside the terminal as they needed more experienced immigration attorneys on the ground. By evening, mass protests almost shut down various international airports around the country.

This movement building and community resistance supported the courts’ pushback on President Trump’s executive order. On January 28 a federal court in New York blocked a part of the executive order. Since then, the courts have halted both the initial and the revised version of his executive order on immigration. The synergy among the courts, the public, social media, and lawyers contributed to the resistance against his discriminatory executive orders. This was unimaginable during the post-9/11 period; the public never took to the streets in any similar way to challenge Bush’s post-9/11 policies.

President Trump has been in office for only four months, and yet it feels like four years. While public awareness of immigration issues has improved since I wrote the Clearinghouse Review article below, we have a long way to go and a lot of work ahead of us if we want to continue to push back on his discriminatory immigration policies.